Dennis Rodman should make Kim Jong-un ‘hear the cries of his people,’ letter from North Korean prison camp survivor pleads

TOKYO — The only person born in a North Korean labour camp to have escaped to the West has written an impassioned open letter to Dennis Rodman, the former NBA basketball star, asking him to use his influence with Kim Jong-un to make him “hear the cries of his people.”

Shin Dong-hyuk’s letter, published in The Washington Post, comes days before Rodman is due to travel to North Korea to meet its leader for a third time to prepare for a basketball match billed as “The Big Bang in Pyongyang.”

Sponsored by Paddy Power, an Irish gaming firm, the match is due to take place in January and will pit a group of former professional players from the U.S. against a team of North Koreans trained by Rodman.

Addressing the letter to “Dear Mr. Rodman,” Mr. Shin wrote that he was born in Camp 14 in the mountains of North Korea. “For more than 50 years, Kim Jong-un, his father and his grandfather have used prisons like Camp 14 to punish, starve and work to death people the regime decides are a threat,” he wrote.

“A prisoner’s ’crime’ can be his relation by blood to someone the regime believes is a wrongdoer or wrong-thinker. My crime was to be born as the son of a man whose brother fled to South Korea in the 1950s.

“At this very moment, people are starving in these camps,” the letter continued. “Others are being beaten, and someone soon will be publicly executed as a lesson to other prisoners to work hard and obey the rules. I grew up watching these executions, including the hanging of my mother.” Mr Shin escaped in January 2005, stealing an old military uniform and making his way to the Chinese border. He bribed border guards to get across the Tumen River into China, where he worked as a labourer before travelling on to South Korea.

His story was told in a bestselling biography titled, Escape from Camp 14: One man’s remarkable odyssey from North Korea to freedom in the West, a book which Mr. Shin offered in his letter to send to Rodman. “I cannot presume to tell you to cancel your trip to North Korea,” wrote Mr. Shin.

“It is your right to drink fancy wines and enjoy yourself in luxurious parties, as you reportedly did in your previous trips to Pyongyang. But as you have a fun time with the dictator, please try to think about what he and his family have done and continue to do.

“I am writing to you, Mr. Rodman, because, more than anything else, I want Kim Jong-un to hear the cries of his people,” the letter says.

Mr. Shin’s appeal is likely to fall on deaf ears, as Rodman has previously dismissed calls to distance himself from the regime.

At a press conference in October after his previous visit, he said: “Kim loves basketball. This match will help us all get along and see eye-to-eye through basketball, and with my friendship with Kim, I know this will happen.”